Musings about food, cooking, wine and related issues -- eating and shopping locally, reading nutrition and ingredient labels, being mindful of food sources -- with digressions into knitting, books, films, music and even the occasional sociopolitical rant.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Raising a glass to new beginnings

I keep complaining (mostly internally) about not getting enough writing done, and about not writing consistently. This past weekend, I typed over 7500 words. The problem, if it is really a problem, is that everything was written for an audience of one. Audience of two might be more accurate sinceI keep rereading what I wrote. Over the course of today, I wrote another thousand words which will likely never be read by anyone but me. (In this case, that's a good thing.)

7500 is a lot of words for a not quite forty-eight hour period. Respectable at any rate.

Somewhere in either a NaNoWriMo or Script Frenzy conversation, I read about wasting one's word count on writing other than the project at hand -- chatting, e-mailing, posting to various social networking sites, sending text messages -- and I realized that when I really get going, either due to concentration or because I get really emotionally fired up about something, word count isn't the problem. The problem is where I channel it and how I use it.

Some things can't really be helped. Those probably fifty e-mails I send every day at work, for example.

Other things shouldn't be helped. Writing in my journal is cathartic for me. It helps me figure things out and work through problems and deal with various emotional crises and conundrums (conundra?). I have set up a private blog or two in the past where the posts can only be viewed by select, invited individuals. I think that kind of writing is good, too. It tends to be the most creative writing I do that someone else sees. That particular audience has disappeared, however.

The time has come to broaden my writing horizons, and my audience. I'm not much of a social butterfly. I'm a nerdy little hermit who tends to worry about being noticed by strangers, but even in my tiny little corner of the world, I know that there are a few people listening, so maybe it is time that I speak up and let my voice carry just a little farther, and maybe a few other people will hear me and think that what I have to say is interesting.

Or not. But I definitely won't know if I don't try.

There are certainly plenty of opportunities and possibilities out there. I have heard rumors of Camp NaNoWriMo. And I have a Script Frenzy screenplay I have never finished. As well as the first nanowrimo novel. I could finally figure out how to write rpg characters, maybe even become a dungeon master if I decide that I like it.

A good bit of what I write might still stay hidden for a while, but in the meantime, I am going to take another shot at blogging.

After all, as Julie Powell says in Julie and Julia, "I could write a blog. I have thoughts."